The present invention relates to information management. Information held by an organization can be used for many purposes, for example, to gain an understanding of how the organization is performing, to assess what risks exists and where to discover opportunities for new business or continued growth, etc. In order to do this, the organization typically treats information as an asset, that is, the information needs to be managed, measured, protected and maintained to appropriate standards.
This emerging field, dedicated to managing information as an asset, is referred to using several names, such as “data governance”, “business information management and protection,” or “information governance.” Within this field is a new user role, referred to as the “Data Steward.” The definition of the Data Steward role is still in some flux, and it is believed that there may be several levels of data steward in an organization, ranging from a “Technical Data Steward,” who is responsible for the ensuring that the underlying software and hardware supports data governance requirements, to a “Line-of-Business Data Steward,” who is responsible for data governance for the line of business, and an “Executive level Data Steward” role. Nevertheless, irrespective of the level at which the Data Steward is operating, the Data Steward is responsible for a collection of information. The responsibilities include, for example, ensuring that the information collection meets the needs of the organization in terms of quality, availability, accuracy, precision and timeliness, etc.
What constitutes an information collection is typically defined by the business-side of the organization. For example, “Records for customers living in North America” or “Records for high-value customers” or “Physical Assets older than five years” are examples of various types of information collections. Typically these information collections are supported by a heterogeneous set of systems, in which each system may support parts of multiple collections. Furthermore, within each system, there can also be a variety of technology products involved in managing the information, such as ETL (Extract Transform and Load) tools, data quality tools, data management tools, application screens, development tools, etc. Currently, the Data Steward may need to use several of these tools to keep their information collection up to the required standards. While each individual tool may adequately serve its specific purpose, there is currently no single tool that a Data Steward can use to record the needs of the information collection as a whole and manage the information collection as such. Having a single, overarching tool would allow Data Stewards to maintain a business focus to represent the organization's information needs, rather than being distracted by the limitations of using a patchwork of individual, specialized information management and processing tools.